I’m looking for material that offers thoughtful extrapolations of current trends and likely trends in, particularly, technology. Not just technology in a vacuum, however, but how it will effect all other aspects of life. Predicting the future has always been a less than succesful endeavor but there have always been a few visionaries. Magazines, books, websites, anything. The more non-linear in thought the better. Thanks in advance - KC
The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil is kind of a neat book. It talks about the progress he thinks technology will take and what its impact upon society will be. Some of his ideas are kind of far out there, but it’s still good food for thought. It also has what you’re after–a picture of what the future might look like, and reasons why. Although I’m not in a position to really comment on some of this guy’s ultimate conclusions, I will say this–the book entertained me and I learned some stuff I didn’t know before.
A number of years ago I read several books by futurist Alvin Toffler. I understand a lot of people didn’t like his views, but he still gave some interesting ideas about what was then the future (some of his ideas still might be the future). I liked The Third Wave and War and Anti-War, although Future Shock seems to be his best known work. Even the surly kid with the bad complexion and dilated eyes who stands behind the counter at your local bookstore franchise should be able to find Future Shock for you.
Okay, I’m done going to Amazon. Check out Challenges by scifi writer Ben Bova. It’s an entertaining collection of ess ays and short stories about challenges faced or to be faced by people like scientists and science fiction writers. I suppose this book could be in either the fiction or non-fiction section.
I also like to watch re-runs of Star Trek. 
Warning: I just looked at the Ben Bova book–twelve stories and six ess ays, ranging from 1962-1992. So you can pretty much bet that some of the stuff is out-of-date and probably, in some cases, downright wrong.
Future Quartet. Four stories ranging from very pessimistic to very optomistic by Charles Sheffield, Jerry Pournelle, and a few others. It also contains four essays that were the basis for the stories.
The format is pretty neat, and gives you a good range to work with. Just remember that you can’t predict a lot of things. Not even the folks at Ford thought SUVs would be as popular as they are…
Kurzweil wrote “The Age of Spiritual Machines” in 2000 just before the dotcoms went bust, and the book itself is tainted by the blind optimism of that time. Ray Kurzweil is a great guy who has done a lot in his career (he invented some of the first digital music synthesizers, the first OCR software, and the first voice recognition software) but he is an unabashed optimist. The book goes so far as to say science and technology is going to make humanity in effect, god-like: virtually omnipotent, truly omniscient, immortal, and endlessly entertained. He does not however make much mention of any of the negative philosophical and social implications of such a future. His new book, “The Singularity is Near” which has not been published yet will hopefully offer much more restrained prognostication, tempered by the changed world environment. You might also try, “The Long Boom” this book offers an idealistic vision of Globalization, where everything goes right. The hungry are fed, the environment is repaired, the middle class grows, capitalism thrives, and the world peaceably unites. Also a relic of the happy-go-lucky dotcom years, but an interesting read none the less.
It is only one homo sap’s opinion, but I read Kurzweil’s book recently and I thought it was idiotic. I know that he did some remarkable things, but this book isn’t one of them. As one example, he actually says that Moore’s law (that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 (or 21 or 24) months) implies that there is going to be some major breaktrhough in chip fabrication in the near future, since the end is in sight for present methods. This is absurd. Yes there might be such a breaktrhough, but it is, by definition, unpredictable. Moore’s law is not a law of nature, but K treats it as though it were. There is more like that, in fact a whole book full. He argues that the Turing test will be passed by a machine in the relatively near future (I think it was by 2020), although there is no evidence that it is anywhere in sight. My prediction isn’t for a time frame. My prediction is that the Turing test will be passed only after a major breakthrough in the understanding of conciousness and intelligence. It could come tomorrow (I guess) or maybe it won’t come for 100 or 1000 years. If ever. That is the nature of true research. If the results were predictable, it wouldn’t be research; it would be development (or engineering). That is why “results-oriented research” is an oxymoron. Daniel Dennett does research into the nature of conciousness and I have read some of it. Is it convincing? No, not especially. Is it wrong? I certainly wouldn’t say so. I wish him the best of luck; at least he is trying. Currently the problem seems intractible, but he has the courage to look at it anyway. Logically, there are only two possibilities: that conciousness has a mechanical explanation in terms of laws of nature (possibly including those to be discovered) or it is can be explained only supernaturally. While the latter is logically possible, I for one do not believe it.
But to return to the point, Kurzweil doesn’t even seem to recognize that there is problem here. So I don’t credit him with having any insight into the future.
Think back 50 years ago to what Sci-Fi writers of the era thought it would be like now. They almost all assumed that space flight, at least in the Solar System, would be commonplace. They virtually all assumed that everything would be atom-powered. That we would all be going around in personal helicopters. And predictions of an atomic holocaust were also commonplace. What none of them predicted were personal computers, horrid traffic jams whereever you go, energy shortages, global warming, the tragic failure of the many “Wars on drugs” and so on. As someone said, prediction is hard, especially of the future.
BTW, one observation I have made is this: If someone from 1950 looked at a home of 2000, what would be different? Not that much. Yes, the TV is larger and color and the VCR would be unfamiliar. The dishwasher and automatic washer are much more widespread, but weren’t unknown then. And a PC, if any, would be totally unknown. On the other hand the office of 2000 would be totally unfamiliar to the office worker of 1950. No typewriter, but a computer on every desk. And no office answers a telephone any more. Now ask about the changes from 1900 to 1950 and the answers are reversed. In 1900, only 1% of homes, but virtually all offices, had telephones. Offices mostly had typewriters (manual and rather clunky, of course) and the change to electric was but evolutionary. Radio didn’t exist (although I guess wireless was just beginning). Suburbs (“trolley suburbs”) were just barely getting going, but most of us lived in town, usually in walking distance from employment. The conclusion from all this. Well, offices may not change much in the next 50 years, but everything that has happened to offices will be happening to homes. As an example, by 2010, I imagine the average home will have broadband internet access.
“Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of the year 2000 will be able to do her daily cleaning with a hose.”
–The Washington Post, ca. Dec. 1999, displaying a graphic from a 1950 edition of Popular Science.
I still have that one stuck to my refrigerator.
Well, I’ll be. Now you can put it on your refrigerator, too!
I wouldn’t trust any account of the future. No one can even begin to imagine what the future holds, and what unthinkable inventions will be invented.
…Or we could just all be nuked into dust, which would be a pretty simple future.
Anyway, imagine a prediction from 1990 of the year 2000. It would be wildly inaccurate, even though there’s only 10 years difference, because it wouldn’t take into account the WWW.
Arthur C. Clarke is pretty good about this,he published the idea for satellites in orbit over 1 spot for telecommunication purposes.Anything after 2001:A Space Oddessy will start you thinking.
Back around 1970 or so, we folk of the twenty-first century were going to be living in communal utopias having constant promiscuous sex. Damn, the future just ain’t what it used to be.
I’m a science fiction writer and a futurist and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve never seen a good forecast of the future. The future involves dozens of major systems, billions of people and loads of unpredictability. It won’t happen the way people think it will. That’s the only guarantee.
Of course, that won’t stop people from speculating uselessly.
“Imagined Worlds” by Freeman Dyson is interesting. He’s a scientist but also a great storyteller.
I read “Future Shock” when it first came out and other books making predictions about the future. By now we should have completely paperless offices (right!), be harvesting most of our food from the sea, live in houses that take care of themselves, manufacturing plants would be running themselves with a human checking them every week and have robots running around. These same things are probably in the newer books and perhaps some day they will be right. I know I sound like a cynic, but fact is I still like to read those books.
[sup]What was the name of that book, again?[/sup]
Since you’re looking for suggestions more than facts, I’ll move this thread to IMHO.
I’d strongly suggest The Transparent Society by David Brin. Brin, who’s both a scientist and a science fiction writer, attempts to extrapolate the growing impact the internet and other forms of modern technology will have on both individuals and society as a whole.